Archive for the ‘George W. Bush’ Category

Small but mighty -- tugboats maneuver the carrier USS John F. Kennedy into its mooring place. (Wikipedia)

Patient and constant pressure – that’s how little tugboats move big ships where they are supposed to go. That is what conservatives will have to do with the new (God willing!) president.

This is directed at you Republicans who say you will stand behind your non-Romney candidate for the nomination, no matter what, all the way to Election Day.

I feel your pain. I wrote in Alan Keyes in the general election in 2008, and have discussed extensively why I did that. Hand-picked loser John McCain was just too repugnant a weasel to vote for. I still believe the GOP establishment picked him as the best candidate to hand the election to Barack Obama. Why? Because losing was less scary for them than winning and having to admit to the unpleasant state in which George II left us, and then (shudder) deal with it.

The flaw in my analysis of that election was that I swallowed the popular assumption that electing the “right” president would reverse the century of Progressive erosion that has nearly washed away our fundamental freedoms.

That erosion paved the way for Trojan Horse Marxist Barack Obama, the single most destructive president in history, who then did more damage to our Constitutional Republic than any president since Wilson, and is on a trajectory to become a virtual – or actual – dictator in a second term.

With A Democrat majority in the House and Senate until the Great Rebound of 2010, Obama rammed through legislation, and appointed “Czars” that threaten to turn the Constitution into a meaningless rag. Obamacare, with its thousands of pages of abuses and illegalities; “recess appointments” without recesses; Supreme Court nominees without any qualifications other than allegiance to his socialist world view; “Fast and Furious,” and other, grotesque miscarriages of justice by his sock-puppet Attorney General, apologies to despots not entitled to apologies… the list is long.

If he gets a second term, Obama and his crew of leftist hacks and clowns will accomplish their mission, turning the best country in the history of the world into a third-rate banana republic, without the capacity to grow a single banana.

After the airway, breathing and circulation are restored, there will still be not just years, but decades of work to do, rooting out the regulators and executive branch hacks and parasites who have embedded themselves in the bloated bulk of our federal government, feeding on their host while contributing, each of them, to its destruction.

That is why I will vote for the Republican nominee in November, no matter who he (OR SHE!) is.

Our new (God willing!) president, prodded by the conservative tugboats in Congress and the tens of millions of Tea Party conservatives and Constitutionalists in the electorate, will have to apply patient and constant pressure to the right, forcing the government back into the role prescribed for it in our founding documents.

No single man or woman, no single president, can reverse the century of socialization advanced by Democrats and Liberal Republicans.

The angry and awakened conservative electorate simply cannot go back to sleep — even if the Republicans win big in November.

We have to take some of the time that we used to use to work, play and take care of our families, and put it into relentless, constant pressure on all three branches of government to get out of our faces, out of our pockets, out of our families, out of our businesses, and back into the constraints of the Constitution.

We can force a Republican Senate to approve competent and ethical appointments to cabinet departments and to the federal courts, and to soundly reject stupid, negligent or simply corrupt nominees, regardless of presidential or GOP hack pressure.

We can steer a Republican House to reject any act that doesn’t contract our debt, and to defund agencies that don’t have any Constitutional basis for their existence, while we wait for a chastened executive branch to abolish those agencies and departments. We can also compel our Representatives to initiate impeachment of unfit judges, and build fires under cabinet officials who have lost sight of their Constitutional limitations and responsibilities.

We can’t do any of the above without research, emails, calls, visits, campaign contributions and constant vigilance applied by millions of diligent, persistent voters.

We can push a rudderless America away from the emotional appeals of the progressives and liberal lobbies, and back toward

Like tugs moving a giant ship, or like a Cumberland River towboat pushing thousands of tons of gravel or grain downriver, we can steer the Republican “leadership” in the right direction – or replace them in the next elections.

Barge tug pushes thousands of tons of cargo on the Cumberland River near Ashland City, TN (Photo by the author)

The mainstream media have been frustrated in their efforts to report the most Obama-friendly version of events in the raid that resulted in the death (or not) of U/Osama bin Laden in Pocky-Stawn.

The media frustration results from the inability of the Obama administration to report a version of the story that remains uncontradicted for more than four hours.

I am offering this account in an effort to relieve the media from that frustration. I’m here to help.

Okay, here goes:

The Special Operations Group SEAL Team Six attacked the compound from helicopters, and encountered or did not encounter small arms fire in resistance. The Pocky-Stawni government did or did not know about the six years of bin Laden’s presence in the compound, and was or was not consulted before and/or after the raid as to the reason and extent thereof.

Bin Laden did or did not resist, with or without the firearms he did or did not have, and used or did not use one of his wives, or perhaps a daughter, as a human shield.

His body was or was not removed from the scene, along with computer hard drives and thumb drives, which had a treasure trove, or not, of intelligence value.

Intelligence gleaned or not gleaned from “enhanced interrogation techniques” in secret prisons over the last several years, was essential or was not used at all, or was just part of a wondrous mosaic of information, used to set up the raid and execute it over the span of less than an hour.

Bin Laden’s body was disposed of at sea twelve hours later, in a ceremony that either was or was not in conformity with Islamic laws regarding the disposal of dead muslims, because bin Laden was, or was not, a muslim.

Photos of the dead terrorist icon’s body will or will not be released to the public, because the release of said photos would either foment or prevent violence in the muslim world against muslims, or non-muslims, or someone.

Bin Laden, who was either dead years ago from kidney failure, was killed a short time ago in a missile attack, was killed in a firefight or unarmed, on sight, or wasn’t there at all, or has never existed, is expected to serve as a rallying symbol for terrorists everywhere, or as an example of what happens to terrorists if they don’t mend their ways.

PLEASE NOTE:Members of the media are cautioned to pay close attention to Obama administration press conferences, photo opportunities and talk show appearances over the next several weeks while material facts and details of these events evolve, revolve, appear and disappear.

“Give us money, so we can re-elect spineless leaders to ignore you until next election.”

I just got an email from the RNC, begging for money, again. I get them all the time, but, as I sometimes do, I will respond to this one in an “open letter” format.

The immediate trigger for this open letter was reading the following paragraph:

Nothing would make The New York Times, The Washington Post or The Huffington Post happier than printing articles in April that the Republican Party is finished because the RNC’s Federal Election Commission first quarter report showed us lagging behind in donations from our nationwide network of conservative grassroots supporters.

Herein we find one of the stupidest things the Stupid Party believes: That we should give a damn what The New York Times, The Washington Post or The Huffington Post thinks.

A pathetic and pointless desire for approval from these left-leaning media hacks is one of the most glaring weaknesses of the Stupid Party “leadership.” This “leadership” has brought us to this precipice, over which is a socialist autocracy in which the Constitution is an irrelevant, historical curiosity.

If the “leadership” had rejected the $105 Billion land mine in the continuing resolution that funds the implementation of the obscenity known as Obamacare; if it had rejected the taxpayer subsidy for killing unborn children to be handed to Planned Parenthood; if it had rejected taxpayer funding of the government’s left-wing propaganda organ, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, there might be a whisper of a chance I would give the RNC a dime.

Of course, none of that happened. The “leadership” in the House won’t even come down firmly in favor of not raising the debt limit – let alone on introducing the kinds of spending cuts that would really make a difference in the long run, and that would signal to American taxpayers and the world that there is any seriousness about getting us out of debtor-nation slavery.

What sorts of cuts am I talking about? How about defunding Obamacare, the Department of Education, the EPA’s “cap and trade” scam, the FCC’s initiative to regulate the Internet and shut down talk radio, all foreign aid to countries that routinely fund terrorism and discriminate against Christians, and – yes, I’m saying it – the Cowboy Poetry Festival. That is just a tiny percentage of the wasteful and self-destructive government activity we can do without.

Individual Republican candidates may see some small change from me, if there is any left over after buying gas and inflated groceries, but RNC, don’t hold your breath.

If you care so much about what The New York Times, The Washington Post or The Huffington Post think, ask them for money.

Those of us above a certain age remember when TV ads trumpeted a “new, improved” cereal or dish detergent. All the proof we had of newness or improvement was the package, which had new, snazzy colors and maybe a cool, new shape. Sure enough, the words, “NEW!” and “IMPROVED!” are there, right on the label.

Of course the new product often came with a new, improved, higher price.

When we opened the new, improved package, we often found the same, old product inside, or an old product with irrelevant tweaks and tunes that left us with same ole’ same ole’. The marketing department obviously ran the show in these enterprises, and the product research and development department was AWOL or irrelevant.

It doesn’t matter whose picture you put on the box – Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot — socialism is a failed product that has been repackaged countless times over the last 150 years. It has never worked, and despite a death toll of well over a hundred million innocent people in a seemingly endless series of ruthless and bloody “marketing campaigns,” it keeps coming back.

The latest attempt at socialism, advanced by Democrats and RINOs, is a hideous parade of defective products: Obamacare, Government Motors, Cap and Tax, and union pension bailouts, to name but a few. President Obama, in a post-mid-term election presser intended to explain away the blunt rejection of the same old product with his latest packaging, stubbornly refused to understand the meaning of the election results.

The problem, he said, was with the message. It was just bad marketing.

As the Gipper famously said, “There you go, again.”

No, Dear Leader, the problem isn’t the marketing. The product – socialism — stinks, has always stunk, and always will stink. No amount of marketing, packaging, promotion, rebates, coupons or discounts will sell socialism, because it is an inherently defective product.

Socialist regimes always have to threaten their customers with death or imprisonment to get them to buy it, and they inevitably have to carry out those threats, if their regimes last long enough.

Whether or not it is imported from China, socialism is easily broken into sharp-edged, poisonous choking hazards, and ultimately, it is a threat to health, safety and, especially, to freedom.

Coming on the heels of the dismissal of commentator Juan Williams from National Public Radio (NPR), is an initiative by some Republican legislators to defund NPR. Can they do that? Yes, they can! Will they? Probably not, but anything’s possible, if there’s enough backbone to get it done. Big if.

The Constitution (Article I, Section 7) explicitly ascribes the power to spend money to the House of Representatives. Of course, that has been the case since the Constitution was ratified, in 1787, but even in the most Republican-dominated years after the “Republican Revolution” of 1994, the House has never had the backbone to pull funding from NPR, the National Endowment for the Arts (remember “Piss Christ”?), the Department of Education (“No Child Left Behind,” and countless other, anti-education outrages), or the Environmental Protection Agency (killing California farms to save bait fish, etc., ad nauseam)…

Add your favorite, destructive federal entity in need of a funding diet, and the House didn’t defund it either. If the GOP wins big on November 2nd, will they actually go at starving these destructive federal parasites? Sad to say, I’ll have to see it to believe it, and even then… will they keep it up when their “leadership” tells them to sit down and shut up?

Here’s hoping that the Tea Party movement and organizations like Votility.com. keep the pressure on the congressional “Class of 2010” to starve these grasping, destructive parasites into obscurity, until they can be abolished altogether. Let’s hope socialized health care is already on the endangered species, list by then.

Then, maybe after we peel off another layer of calcified RINOs and socialist hacks (including their Dear Leader) in 2012, they can go after some of the “enemies within” that infest our State Department and Pentagon bureaucracies, making a career of destroying our country from their entrenched, unelected positions of power.

It is 21 pages long in PDF format. I copied and pasted the text into my ancient version of Microsoft Word, and found the following when I clicked on “Properties”:

"Pledge" stats, according to MS Word

Twenty-six pages; 214 paragraphs; 7854 words… why does it have to be so big? If I may use a bit of a Tea Party metaphor, it reads like weak tea. I’m not happy to make this assessment, because a Congressman I respect immensely, Mike Pence, stood in front of a hardware store and spoke for the group in the introduction of the Pledge.

Brief disclosure: I know Mike Pence from his talk show days, when I was a frequent caller, and even got an autographed caricature of Mike, endorsed with the description, “Favorite caller to the Mike Pence Show.” Once, I even made a nervous, inept, in-studio guest appearance on his show, concerning the loss of a loved one to a drunk driver. He bought my lunch afterward, and we had a good conversation.

I have disagreed with Mike on specific issues since he first went to Congress, but I still believe he is, as he described himself described himself on his radio show, a “Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order.” He is a consummate gentleman, besides all that, and I will bet his colleagues, supporters and opponents, have found him to be so. End of Disclosure

Now, it’s time to get to the point. Why did it take so many pages to say what needs to be said? One paragraph from the introduction to the document said 99% of what needed to be said on the subject:

“We pledge to honor the Constitution as constructed by its framers and honor the original intent of those precepts that have been consistently ignored – particularly the Tenth Amendment, which grants that all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

Wow, what an eloquent, unqualified, statement – solid and substantial as granite; as sufficient and self-sustaining as anything to come out of the mouths of Republicans in decades.

Any details that followed that statement of principle could have been specific goals for its implementation. I suggest the following:

We resolve to stop and reverse, with every means available to us, the measures of the federal government that violate this principle. We will speak and vote at every opportunity, to repeal laws that violate the Constitution, and we will vote and speak against any and all new legislation that violates the Constitution.

In addition to abolition and repeal, we will also speak for and vote to remove current funding and to oppose new funding for the acts and agencies of the federal government that violate the Constitution.

Because federal judicial fiat has been used so often to thwart or ignore the Constitution, we will offer and aggressively pursue articles of impeachment against any federal judge who advances such anti-Constitutional measures or decisions.

We offer these promises in the full knowledge that embedded special interests and the vast inertia of the expanding juggernaut of federal authority will oppose us at every turn.

We understand that we may fall out of favor with the media, the powerful, bureaucratic establishment and the entrenched, political leadership on all sides in Washington and in the states.

We have no fear of their disapproval, because they are wrong, and they have done their part to make the federal government so large and grasping over the last decades.

We trust in our Creator to stand with us to defend the inalienable rights He granted our ancestors and our posterity.

We trust in the citizens of the United States of America to support us as long as we abide by the Constitution, and to send us home if we break these pledges.

Ten sentences.

Nine paragraphs.

That’s all I really need to see in a statement of purpose.

The arithmetic, the legislative agenda, the economic and employment statistics, the alphabet soup of federal agencies… all of that is important, but it is subordinate to the principles. It does not belong in this document.

Mike – ahem, Congressman Pence – please appeal to your colleagues to distill and reduce the pledge to these essentials, and to make it clear that the details that follow will adhere to these principles.

If the Republicans are to have a future in this country; if, indeed, the legislative branch is not to become an irrelevant, impotent venue for meaningless Kabuki theater, like the Supreme Sovietof old, while the courts, the White House and the bureaucrats complete the destruction of this Constitutional Republic, this pledge and your adherence to it, is our only hope short of armed revolution.

“’The filibuster should be relegated to the extreme circumstances, and I don’t think Elena Kagan represents that,’ said Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.”—AP article carried on breitbart.com

Will someone please point out to me a Republican with a spine, anywhere in a senior position of responsibility in Congress?

Senator Jon Kyl clearly is not one. Senator Kyl, if intercepting this left-wing hack of an Obama nominee on a clear trajectory to a lifetime appointment to the US Supreme Court is not “extreme circumstances,” what the hell is?

It’s only the judicial entity you and your colleagues have negligently entrusted with the power to say the United States Constitution is whatever they say it is at a given moment, that’s all. What little public record she has includes hostility to the military and free speech, and a fondness for abortion. Will you be astonished if she is also hostile to the Second Amendment and the other nine articles of the Bill of Rights? If you are, you are as clueless as you are spineless.

Does anyone understand why a Republican “leader” would roll over and play dead on such an issue even before hearings have begun? Is anyone surprised that the Tea party people and other grassroots conservatives and constitutionalists have turned their backs on the Republican Party “leaders?”

These eunuchs will make nice while the Socialist Democrats guide our country into the twilight, as a failed, post-constitutional, pseudo-European socialist state with no history and no future, and a debt to the Chinese that will make us their wholly-owned subsidiary.

Cumberland River near Ashland City, TN, in better days -- August, 2008

Ah, how nature can turn. The gentle, slow-moving Cumberland River and its tributaries have given us lots of comfort and beauty, and not a few catfish.

Last weekend (May 1 and 2, 2010), however, nature turned mean. A vast and unstoppable force, sometimes raging, and other times creeping, the Cumberland and its tributaries surged out of their banks and up miles of roads, in through thousands of front doors, stealing irreplaceable personal and public treasures, and destroying dreams and lives.

Flood water churns under the Ashland City bridge over the Cumberland, twenty feet higher than normal. 5/5/10

Riverview Restaurant/Campground, Ashland City, TN 5/5/10

There it met the water from the second day of rains flowing downhill, having saturated the surrounding ground to the point where it could absorb no more than a paved parking lot. Inconsequential creeks and streams became roaring whitewater monsters.

Take the most rain ever to fall in Nashville over 48 hours… and double it. At one point along the Cumberland, in better days, a relatively civilized river was a few hundred feet across. By Monday morning, after over a foot of rain, that same stretch of river had swollen to thousands of feet across, and it carried cars, livestock and whole buildings along at an astonishing pace. Structures that weren’t floated off their foundations were crushed under the weight and pressure of millions of tons of running water, pushing debris ahead like battering rams. Every crushed building, uprooted tree and floating car added to the mass that careened downstream, multiplying the flood’s destructive power.

As the flood waters recede – and they continue to recede, a week later — they leave behind mud, building materials, brush, dead things, an evil stench, uncatalogued contaminants and nightmarish memories that will last as long as the survivors.

The Army Corps of Engineers, which operates the system of dams, locks and generating sites along the Cumberland and other rivers in the region, had no experience to guide them in operating the flood gates and locks to best manage the water, because not since the completion of the system in the late ‘60s has so much rain fallen in so short a period. The best they could do for a few days was operate the system to keep the floods from destroying it, adding greatly to the surrounding destruction. That they did.

When I had time to watch national news, which was seldom, I was amazed at how little coverage was given to our situation. My amazement diminished when I thought about it.

I composed a “top-ten list” of reasons the lamestream media ignored this story:

10. Tennessee is a Red state. You could skip 9) through 1) now, and know all you need to know.

9.Al Gore didn’t call a press conference at his Nashville estate to blame the flooding on global warming.

8. People in Tennessee don’t sit around and wait for the gummint to give them a hand. They help themselves, and each other. No government dependency story, here, folks; move along!

7. New Orleans Progressive hack Ray Nagin is not the mayor of Nashville. Karl Dean is. Dean took personal responsibility for his city’s rescue and recovery, and was clearly in charge. No whining, no blame-shifting, just good communication and effective action.

6. People in Middle Tennessee cling to their bibles and guns. Looting makes good video, but it has not become a popular leisure-time activity here, because it is publicly frowned upon, and is likely to be fatal.

5. There is no way to blame it on Karl Rove, Halliburton or Dick Cheney.

4. CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS and CNN did not inform the hacks and opportunists in Washington of events in Tennessee, thus depriving them of timely photo opportunities against a backdrop of hapless victims and tireless aid workers. No one watches MSNBC, so coverage there would not have mattered, anyway.

3. There was no way to blame it on Wall Street speculators, Big Oil or Big Tobacco.

2. It’s hard for the race mongers to claim racism, since people of all races got wet, and people of all races were immediately helping each other, without waiting for government permission or coercion.

1. There was no way to blame it on George W. Bush.

It doesn’t matter much to locals to notice the way we were ignored by a crisis-hungry White House and its propaganda engine, but it certainly tells us who our friends are – and aren’t — and how we stand in the eyes of the current establishment.

It’s not hard to imagine. Some primped New York twit from a network morning show in fashionable raingear, trailing a camera crew and makeup artist, walks up to a Bubba dragging soggy, stinking carpet out the front door of his mobile, or searching for his lost goats in the trees, or carrying a dripping family photo album. The twit sticks a microphone in his face, and asks, “So, how do you feel? Don’t you wish Bush and Cheney had done more to prevent this?”

Considering the most reasonable reaction to the kind of stupid question said twits are capable of, maybe it’s just as well. There were enough casualties from the flood waters, without adding any New York twits to the body count. A jury of peers would acquit Bubba in five minutes, but the lawsuits would go on forever.

Stick your microphone where the sun don’t shine, New York twits. We’ll manage without you, somehow.

I loved her nomination speech at the Republican National Convention, but not quite enough to vote for the aging opportunist at the top of their ticket.

That’s right – even a magical, electric moment of optimism, wit and apparent willingness to speak the truth couldn’t make me vote for Mister Incumbent Protection Act; Mister McAmnesty; Mister We Shall Not Speak of the Flaming Socialist at the Top of the Democrat Ticket as a Flaming Socialist.

Why? Because I suspected it was an act. I had looked at McCain’s history, and I did not see any chance of this man undergoing the transformation that would have been required to turn him into a leader with more allegiance to the Constitution than to extending the trajectory of his career as a professional politician to the big chair in the Oval Office.

Sarah Palin, I feared, was his last-ditch effort to look like a conservative; to draw back the Republicans, Libertarians and Independents who had been betrayed by two Bushes and a Republican elite that decided Democrat Lite was the way to go. The Republican establishment types too-often found themselves in disagreement with progressives and Socialist Democrats in style, but not in substance. The party of Specter, Snowe, Collins, Lugar and McCain was not, and is not, my party.

If they belong, I don’t.

The headlong rush of Obama, Reid and Pelosi to socialist utopia may have been more leisurely under McCain, but it would have been just as steady and determined.

Like the decades-old fires that burn underground in abandoned coal mines and peat bogs, the socialization of America would have progressed mostly unobserved by those above ground, until the smoldering earth opened up and exposed the extent to which the country’s heart had been burned away by the federal government, and the fire could not be put out.

I watched with interest Saturday night, as Sarah Palin addressed the Tea Party Nation Convention in nearby Nashville. I was not won over, although I wanted to be.

She seemed a bit tired, as if she’d had some sleepless nights to make the appearance fit into her busy schedule. She seemed not like a tea party revolutionary, but more like a slightly exhausted Republican, trying to sound the notes that would make tea partiers respond.

Respond they did, standing to cheer several times, as she struck out at the Obama administration’s cluelessness on national defense, its apparent willingness to destroy the economy, and its utter disregard and contempt for the Tenth Amendment.

I hoped to hear her explicit pledge to support candidates and movements that were committed to all of the Bill of Rights, but that never came. Instead, I heard later that she went from the conference to appearances for Rick Perry and John McCain, neither of whom is a big friend of the Constitution in general, or of the Bill of Rights in particular.

Why, Governor? I would understand if, to honor promises made during the late, lame, lamented election campaign, you appeared briefly with such candidates — but not when you join them on the campaign trail and seem committed to their victory. Remember, a President McCain would have been that fire burning underground, but more slowly — advancing the restrictions on free speech, pushing amnesty for illegal aliens, and pushing for more taxpayer bailouts like the TARP boondoggle. And then the ground opens up…

On another, jangling sour note, the Governor told us that, if she were president, she would endorse expanded exploration and exploitation of American energy sources, and to begin immediately to build nuclear power plants, because they are, “carbon-neutral.” Oh, boy.

The “science” that was supposed to prove it has been exposed as fraudulent. The underlying motivation of the Watermelons – green on the outside, but red on the inside – behind the Cap and Trade bills, and similar schemes is, and has always been, the accumulation of power in the hands of central government.

If Sarah Palin doesn’t know that, or knows but won’t say so, why? Is she just another closet progressive, dressed up like a conservative?

Before we contemplate the “misunderstanding” that allegedly drove allegedly Muslim Major Nidal Malik Hasam to — allegedly — kill or injure more than 40 people, let us contemplate the real misunderstanding, in the media and government. It must be misunderstanding that keeps these people from figuring out what any sane person can see plainly, with no help from “experts” and apologists.

Islam is not just a religion. It’s a political ideology, like Communism or Nazism, and like those ideologies, it has a blueprint for conquering the world. If Major Hasam, as widely reported by witnesses, shouted, “Allahu Akbar!” (Allah is great!) as he fired at his fellow soldiers, he was only following the tenets of that ideology.

Osama bin Laden, Mohammed Atta, al Qaeda, Hamas, the PLO, Iran, Hizbullah, et cetera ad nauseum, are just following this blueprint, as well. To understand that the Major appears to have been following it does not require religious prejudice or rabid xenophobia. All it takes is a look at the facts.

If you want a crash course in Islam, without the political correctness and multiculturalist smog that permeate the media and government propaganda, go to Robert Spencer’s site, Jihad Watch.

If you’re not quite ready for this exercise, read on a bit, and head to Jihad Watch later.

The motivation of the alleged Fort Hood murderer can be found in the following words:

009.029YUSUFALI: Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.PICKTHAL: Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the Religion of Truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low.SHAKIR: Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Messenger have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.

What’s this? Some Christian hate speech, fabricated to sully the “Religion of Peace,” as Dubyah used to call Islam?

Nope. Sorry! It’s from the Koran, the central authoritative text of Islam, allegedly dictated to an Arab allegedly named Mohammed by the Archangel Gabriel.

Is this quoted from some corrupted, altered, evilly-manipulated Koran text found on some Islamophobic Website produced by the vast, Judeo-Christian Conspiracy? Sorry, again! I pasted this directly from the Web pages of the University of Southern California’s (named with apparently accidental irony) “Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement.”

Discerning critics may note that this verse, the 29th of the 9th Surah, is presented in English. Well, I don’t speak or read Arabic, but then, neither do most believers of Islam. Most Muslims live not on the Arabian Peninsula, but in the Asian Pacific, Africa, South Asia and elsewhere.

Wasn’t it thoughtful, then, of three Islamic scholars, Yusufali, Pickthal and Shakir, to produce what they considered to be authoritative translations of the Koran from millennium-old Arabic to relatively modern English?

There are minor differences in the exact words chosen by each to render classical Arabic to English, but one certainly notices the common thread (“fight”) among the versions of 9:29 above, doesn’t one? Are these three guys Islamophobes? Certainly not. They are accepted by Islamic scholars as authoritative. Who are we to doubt them?

Of course, we could debate the “real” meaning of the word, “fight,” which is consistent among the translations.

Is it used in the sense in which John McCain was asking conservatives to “fight” for him in his emasculated 2008 presidential campaign?

Is it used in the way cheerleaders shout, at sporting events: “Fight, team, fight!”?

Well, only if the cheerleaders want their team to kill the other team. I know there are people who take their sports seriously, but I doubt the prevalent desire in any cheer squad, even in Alabama college football, is to exhort their team to kill, as in violently end the lives of, the other team.

If we want to assume that Islam means what it says, and says what it means, we should see what it says a bit earlier in the 9th Surah, verse 5, as below:

009.005YUSUFALI: But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, an seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practise regular charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.PICKTHAL: Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.SHAKIR: So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them; surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

“[F]ight…” “slay…” “beleaguer…” “lie in wait…” “ambush…” Does anybody out there think the Koran is telling Muslims to smack our unbelieving knuckles with a ruler? To take away our Internet privileges? When modern-day terrorists quote the Koran in support of their actions, are they showing us their lack of understanding of Islam? Are they “hijacking” the Religion of Peace”? If we can’t believe the stated motives of the people who want to kill us because we are not Muslims, what are we to believe?

Well, we are told by the multicultural elite that the Koran is much more complex than it appears to be, and that we infidels are not qualified to interpret “fight,” “slay,” or “ambush” to mean what they seem to mean: “fight,” “slay,” or “ambush.” The Koran is just a part of Islam’s operating system, and you have to take into account other authorities, or you are just another misunderstander of Islam — like the terrorists.

You also have to understand the “Sunnah,” the “way of the prophet.” The Sunnah is the collection of writings apart from the Koran that describe the way Mohammed lived his life. He is the model man, if you are a Muslim. If Mohammed did it, it’s OK. If Mohammed didn’t like it, it’s forbidden.

There is this bunch of writings, the Hadiths, that are alleged to be contemporary accounts of Mohammed’s behavior, and transcriptions of his words of wisdom, which tell us how Mohammed acted, and what he thought, said and believed. An authoritative collection of these charming anecdotes is Sahih al-Bukari. This collection, like the Koran, has been translated to English by Islamic scholars who are regarded as the experts on those translations.

So, let’s have an infidel-eyeball at a Hadith or two, for an idea of what sort of model man Mohammed was. If Major Hasan wanted to emulate the model man, how would he act? Look at the way Mohammed treated some enemies of his, who had converted to Islam but changed their minds:

A group of people from ‘Ukl (tribe) came to the Prophet and they were living with the people of As-Suffa, but they became ill as the climate of Medina did not suit them, so they said, “O Allah’s Apostle! Provide us with milk.” The Prophet said, I see no other way for you than to use the camels of Allah’s Apostle.” So they went and drank the milk and urine of the camels, (as medicine) and became healthy and fat. Then they killed the shepherd and took the camels away. When a help-seeker came to Allah’s Apostle, he sent some men in their pursuit, and they were captured and brought before mid day. The Prophet ordered for some iron pieces to be made red hot, and their eyes were branded with them and their hands and feet were cut off and were not cauterized. Then they were put at a place called Al-Harra, and when they asked for water to drink they were not given till they died. (Abu Qilaba said, “Those people committed theft and murder and fought against Allah and His Apostle.”)

Hmmm. Well, it does seem that there is some propensity for hostility — even to the extent of violence — in the model man toward those unpleasant, thieving infidels. (Also, parenthetically, there is the unorthodox use of camel urine as medicine, which may be a hint as to the way “public option” health care is headed.)

In any case, for Muslims, the behavior of the model man is right, trumping any other standard of morality. Period. Did Major Nidal Malik Hasam do no less than follow this example? He couldn’t command hordes of troops, but he could kill some infidels, so he allegedly did.

Okay, maybe this “hadith” is just an isolated citation, taken out of context, mistranslated, seized upon by Christian terrorists to smear Islam – and fatally misunderstood by Major Hasam. Surely, there are no other such events in the history of Islam. Oh, wait:

Allah’s Apostle said: “I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah’s Apostle, and offer the prayers perfectly and give the obligatory charity, so if they perform a [sic] that, then they save their lives an[d – sic] property from me except for Islamic laws and then their reckoning (accounts) will be done by Allah.”

The model man seems a bit intolerant of infidels, if I’m not reading too much into this passage. And this applies not just to camel rustlers, but to all unbelievers in Islam.

Well, maybe this bit of “Islamic Manifest Destiny’ was intended by the model man to be limited to the ancient, Arab world, and not the world as we now know it. After the alleged prophet Muhammad died, Islam cut way back on its ambitions to rule the Earth, right?

Uh, no.

First the Arabs, and then the Turks, extended the grip of Islam by force and conquest, following the example of the model man. A series of “caliphs,” absolute rulers of the Muslim empire, extended the domination of the lands by Islam to the gates of Paris and Vienna, spilling untold oceans of blood, and destroying the treasures and cultures of the lands they conquered.

If Major Hasam did what he is said to have done, he was doing nothing but following in the millennium-old footsteps of the model man. Visit Robert Spencer’s site, Jihad Watch, daily, to read about the latest depredations of those who follow the model man.

If the media and government can’t get past their own blindness and stupidity to the truth about Islam, at least you can.